Collagen Hydrogel Tube Microbioreactors for Cell and Tissue Manufacturing

The production of mammalian cells in large quantities is essential for various applications. However, scaling up cell culture using existing bioreactors poses significant technical challenges and high costs. To address this, we previously developed an innovative 3D culture system, known as the AlgTube cell culture system, for high-density cell cultivation. This system involves processing cells into microscale alginate hydrogel tubes, which are suspended in the culture medium within a vessel. These hydrogel tubes shield cells from hydrodynamic stress and maintain the cell mass below 400 µm in diameter, facilitating efficient mass transport and creating a favorable microenvironment for cell growth. Under optimized conditions, AlgTubes supported long-term culture with high cell viability, rapid expansion (1000-fold increase over 9 days per passage), and high yield (5×10⁸ cells/mL), offering significant advantages over conventional methods. Despite these benefits, AlgTubes have critical drawbacks. They are mechanically fragile, with frequent breakage during culture leading to cell leakage and production failures. Additionally, many cell types exhibit poor growth due to the inability to adhere to the alginate surface, making alginate hydrogel microtubes unsuitable for industrial-scale cell production. To overcome these challenges, we developed a novel collagen hydrogel tube-based microbioreactor system in this work. This system provides enhanced robustness and adhesion, enabling scalable, cost-effective, and efficient cell production for a wide range of applications.